The dying of Ugandan marathoner and Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei on Thursday, following organ failure after being set on hearth by her boyfriend in Endebess, Kenya, is a reminder of the abuse ladies athletes face. Cheptegei is the fourth feminine athlete to be murdered both by a boyfriend or a husband in Kenya over the past three years.
‘Males lurking round ready to money in on someone else’s efforts’ is how Irish missionary Colm O’Connell, often known as the daddy of Kenyan working, put it. ‘How lengthy will society preserve empowering abuse over ladies?’ Joan Chimelo, a distance runner and the founder member of a non-profit to forestall gender violence, requested.
Chimelo in a put up on social media and O’Connell in a documentary have been expressing their anguish after the homicide of Agnes Tirop almost three years in the past. Tirop, a two-time 10,000m World Championship bronze medallist. was discovered with stab wounds on her neck. Her husband Ibrahim Rotich was arrested. Iten, the high-altitude long-distance working capital of the world within the Nice Rift Valley, and environment coaching centres attracts the very best expertise within the area however the murders have solid a protracted shadow.
Based on studies, Cheptegei and her youngsters had gone to church when her boyfriend had sneaked into their dwelling. When she returned he doused her with petrol. A bit of land Cheptegei, who’s from Uganda however lives in Kenya, had purchased in Trans Nzoia county close to her coaching base was a bone of competition. Her father Joseph was quoted as saying that the 2 have been not seeing one another. He additionally requested authorities to make sure that the youngsters and ‘her properties’ have been protected.
After Cheptegie’s dying, Njeri Migwi, the founding father of Usikimye, an organisation that works to forestall gender-based violence, posted on X: “That is Femicide.”
The circumstances that noticed Cheptegei’s life snuffed out is much like Tirop’s, probably the most high-profile athlete who had met with a gory finish. Rotich befriending her when she was a promising teenage runner, providing to change into her coach, although he had no formal certification after which trapping her in an abusive relationship as soon as she began incomes cash from race wins and sponsorships is symptomatic of how males change into coaches or boyfriends or husbands of ladies athletes after which attempt to management their cash.
Tirop had dropped out of faculty and finally moved out with Rotich to Iten. After the abuse began Tirop moved again in along with her mother and father earlier than shifting to a guesthouse in a coaching camp. Nonetheless, as soon as Tirop returned from a race in Germany, Rotich satisfied her to return dwelling. In lower than 24 hours, she was discovered murdered.
Days after Tirop was killed, Edith Muthoni, 200 metres and 400 metres specialist, was hacked to dying after a home quarrel by her husband in Kerugoya.
Six months later, Iten was rocked once more by one other homicide. In a rental home the decomposed physique of Ethiopian-born Kenya’s Damaris Muthee Mutua, who had switched allegiance to Bahrain, was discovered. Her boyfriend was the prime suspect. Reason for dying was strangulation, the autopsy report mentioned.
The murders of Cheptegei, Muthoni, Mutua and Tirop made headlines however there’s proof that a whole bunch of others may meet the same destiny if ample steps are usually not taken to curb gender-based violence.
After Tirop’s homicide, the committee on gender welfare in sports activities in Kenya had carried out a survey. The consequence: 11 p.c of sportswomen in Kenya had been on the receiving finish of bodily, sexual and emotional abuse.
On Thursday, after Cheptegie handed away in Eldoret Kenya’s Sports activities Minister Kipchumba Murkomen mentioned that the necessity of the hour was to guard ladies athletes. “This tragedy is a stark reminder that we should do extra to fight gender-based violence in our society, which lately has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” Murkomen mentioned in an announcement.
Joan Chelimo, the 2018 Prague half marathon champion, is without doubt one of the board members of Tirop’s Angels, began after the athlete’s homicide in 2001. Quite a few distance runners are a part of Tirop’s Angels. One among their goals is to ‘strengthen implementation of legal guidelines, insurance policies and motion plans on violence towards ladies.’
Talking to Reuters on Thursday, Chelimo mentioned: “They get into these traps of predators who pose of their lives as lovers.”
One change Tirop’s Angels is attempting to result in is for ladies athletes to have their very own particular person financial institution accounts as an alternative of joint accounts shared with a husband or boyfriend. Brokers of athletes are additionally instructed to wire cash on to the accounts of the ladies athletes they symbolize.
Within the Bloomberg documentary ‘Run For Your Life’, Irishman O’Connell who got here to Kenya in 1976 to show geography after which began coaching camps for runners, talks about how males attempt to stay off the earnings of ladies athletes after first gaining their belief. “They’re opportunists. They see this as a means of enhancing themselves, as a means of getting on in life themselves. As you change into a profitable individual, you’re a simple goal,” O’Connell mentioned.
Based on an unwomen.org report in 2022, the very best variety of killings of females by an ‘intimate companion and household’ passed off in Africa — 20,000. .This determine was 18,400 in Asia, 7,900 within the Americas and a pair of,300 in Europe. A demographic and well being survey by the Kenya Nationwide Bureau of Statistics in 2022 discovered that 34 p.c of ladies aged between 15 and 49 had skilled bodily violence.
In November final yr, the accused in Tirop’s homicide, her husband Rotich, was granted bail after two years in custody on a bond of $2,600. Tirop’s household remains to be awaiting justice because the hearings proceed in courtroom.